A 3-year-old in a wealthy vegetarian family in India suddenly demands to eat fish, and that’s when the fun begins in Amitav Ghosh’s new novel, Ghost-Eye. Young Varsha has never tasted fish but will not touch a bite of anything else until she gets some, and people around her begin to suspect she’s “a case of the reincarnation type.” Her mother is horrified, her father is sympathetic, her pediatrician and his psychologist wife are puzzled, and their nephew Dinu spends decades trying to solve the mystery of Varsha (and many other mysteries besides).

The story expands to sweep in numerous subplots and characters across times and places, from 1969 Calcutta to its modern identity as Kolkata; to Brooklyn and Oregon and Virginia; and back to India and the vast wetland region of the Sundarban Delta. The cast includes scholars, servants, industrialists, environmental activists, brilliant cooks, supernatural protectors, and the occasional goddess, elephant, and tiger.

Ghosh is the prize-winning author of many novels and nonfiction books, including Sea of Poppies, the first novel in his Ibis trilogy, which was shortlisted for the 2008 Booker Prize and, like much of his work, takes on environmental and cultural issues. In Ghost-Eye, Ghosh’s thematic concerns loom over the story, often to powerful effect. Climate change, disappearing species and invasive ones, covid-19, and UFOs all make multiple appearances and are integral to the narrative.

The clash between traditional ways and 21st-century values is a key theme in the book, with real consequences in characters’ lives. Varsha’s mother, Dipika, cannot bear the thought of sharing her daughter with some other mother in some past life; in her very modern way, Dipika wants the little girl for her own. Photos of a levitating yogi cause no end of discomfort for academics at an American university, and Indian scientists perform elaborate experiments to try to explain how chanting at cows increases their milk production.

Ghosh also shows, however, how old and new can mesh. Jungian psychology’s insistence on synchronicity fits with the magic that many of the characters take for granted. Women in Bengali villages make YouTube videos that teach Dinu how to cook the astonishing flavors of his childhood, which becomes crucial in his quest to understand Varsha.

Ghost-Eye is written in part for South Asians examining their history and culture and exploring questions of how the past fits with the present. It is also aimed at a global audience, providing glimpses of pivotal events in Indian colonial and post-colonial history — detailing, for example, the violence and displacement in the wake of 1947’s Partition but embedding it in the story so that it doesn’t feel like a history lesson.

The novel’s most engaging revelations for Westerners are found in the more intimate corners of Indian family life, especially when Ghosh dives into cooking and eating. These parts of the book lift it into that realm of iconic food-fueled works like Isak Dinesen’s short story “Babette’s Feast” and Laura Esquivel’s novel Like Water for Chocolate. The cooks in Ghost-Eye “rely on memories that are stored not in their heads but in their hands and fingers,” and their craft unfolds in scenes that make readers’ eyes water and noses run:

“the two women marinated the pieces of fish in a paste of salt, turmeric and red chillies, and then fried them lightly in a cast-iron korai over a wood-fired earthen stove. Once the fish had gained a little color, they were taken out, and a paste of onions, garlic and ginger was added to the oil.”

The dozens of different species of fish in the Bengali diet are the bounty of the area’s rivers, a protein source that has sustained the people there for centuries and that form the foundation of an inventive, delicious cuisine.

This rich detail is missing in other aspects of the story, unfortunately. Western readers curious to know the sights, smells, and sounds of Calcutta’s neighborhoods will not find them because so much of the writing is taken up by the wide-ranging plot. One scene, for example, features a character driving another from his house to hers; it goes on for two-and-a-half pages of dialogue but makes no mention of what the car is passing through. Although some textures of Indian urban life — including traffic jams, random power outages, and the appearance of featureless apartment blocks where old mansions once stood — are woven into the book, it’s uneven.

The writing is uneven, too, maybe not surprising in such an ambitious novel that is delivering so much. In places, characters’ voices aren’t convincing; Dinu’s protégé, Tipu, in particular, never seems quite real because his slang has an odd, artificial quality. Sometimes, characters speak in ways that feel repetitious or didactic, and there are clichés dotted throughout the story.

But Ghost-Eye has a lot to say and says it with real impact. Ghosh shows us that the inexplicable and the rational coexist quite companionably in our world. He has given readers a story with a legendary, epic quality, something like a modern myth, which can take its place alongside older myths if its audience is open to embracing this kind of deep story-making. As Dinu’s aunt insists, “It’s not we who choose the myths that guide our lives; it’s they who choose us.”

Sally Shivnan is the author of the short-story collection Piranhas & Quicksand & Love. Her fiction and essays have appeared in the Georgia Review, Antioch Review, Glimmer Train, and other journals, and her travel writing has been featured in anthologies including Best American Travel Writing, as well as in the Washington Post, Miami Herald, Nature Conservancy Magazine, and many other publications.